


Store-bought is Fine

by ereshai



Series: The Christmas Cookie Capers [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bad Cooking, Christmas Cookies, Cookies, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-07 11:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8799676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ereshai/pseuds/ereshai
Summary: Clint is bad at baking - really bad. Phil just has to figure out how to tell him





	

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt: Clint (or Phil) tries to bake for the holidays and the other has to decide whether or not to tell him that he needs professional help with his baked goods (baked bads?)
> 
> This is not as cracky/silly as the other stories in the series.
> 
> Many thanks to jmathieson and lola381pce for looking this over.

**Day One**

Phil looked at the plate of cookies on his desk.

“You baked these?” he asked Clint, who was beaming proudly at him.

Clint nodded and pushed the plate closer. “Try one. Let me know what you think.” His smile never wavered.

Phil picked up a cookie. It was either chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin – it was a little too overdone to tell. “I didn’t know you could bake,” he said and took a bite. It crumbled to charcoal crumbs on his tongue.

“Just started today,” Clint said. “How is it?”

Phil worked to swallow the bite in his mouth. “Um,” he began. “Not bad for your first time? It’s a little… ah… well done.”

“Yeah, it was taking longer than expected so I turned up the oven so they’d get done faster. They got a little burned.”

Phil stared grimly at the cookie in his hand. He didn’t think he would be able to finish it. But Clint was so happy with the damn things, how could Phil tell him they weren’t edible?

Jasper burst into his office. “Phil, have you seen- Barton! Just the person I was looking for. Come with me. Now.”

Clint looked sheepish. “Aw, Sitwell…”

“You can make eyes at Agent Coulson later.” Jasper stood aside and swept his arm out, indicating that Clint should go first.

“Make eyes at? Who talks like that?” Clint turned and smiled at Phil. “Later, Phil.”

“Move it, Barton,” Jasper barked.

“Coming, Grandma.” Clint started to leave. He turned his head at the last minute to say something and collided with the door frame.

“Goodbye, Clint,” Phil said drily.

“I’ll be back later to make eyes at you some more,” Clint said, rubbing his shoulder. “Enjoy the cookies!”

As soon as Clint and Jasper were gone, Phil dumped the cookies into his garbage can. He’d figure out how to talk to Clint about them later.

**Day Five**

Sugar cookies this time. After four days of burned chocolate chip cookies (or oatmeal raisin – no one had managed to figure out which kind), perhaps Clint had given up on them. Sugar cookies did seem a lot simpler. They were decorated with green and red frosting to look like little wreaths. They didn’t seem to be burned – Clint must have finally taken his advice to stick to the oven temperature called for in the recipe. And to set a timer.

Phil picked one up and took a bite. Or he tried to – his teeth sank into the frosting on top and stopped abruptly and painfully when they hit the actual cookie. It was like biting a piece of wood. He pulled it out of his mouth and looked at it. Except for the frosting, he hadn’t left a mark on it.

“Don’t bother, Phil,” Maria said. “Cunningham from Logistics cracked a tooth on one of those things. We’re thinking of using them for skeet-shooting. Or as projectiles. R&D has a disc shooter they can modify.”

Phil sighed and put the cookie back on the plate. At least Clint wasn’t around to hear this.

“Are these it, or are they in all the break rooms?” Phil asked, but he suspected he knew the answer. Clint was very enthusiastic about his baking. Phil really needed to figure out how to talk to him about it.

“All of them,” Maria said. “I’ve sent out a group of junior agents to sweep the building. Hopefully we can get to all of them before too much damage is done.”

“Surely not every batch turned out like this.” Phil was starting to get desperate on Clint’s behalf. There had to be at least one edible cookie out there.

“At this point we aren’t taking any chances. You want to be a supportive boyfriend, go right ahead. I’m going to do my job and protect the dental health of the agents under my command.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Phil promised. Clint just needed a little help – professional baking help - to see where he was going wrong.

“Please do. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to talk Director Fury out of adding miniature catapults to our perimeter defense. He thinks these cookies would be the perfect ammunition for them.”

**Day Eight**

Phil let himself into the apartment he shared with Clint. It had been a long three days. He’d gone from neutralizing the sugar cookie threat at SHIELD HQ to an emergency mission in some frozen corner of Hell masquerading as the Midwestern United States and now that he was home, all he wanted to do was take a very hot shower and get twelve hours of sleep.

Clint wandered out of the kitchen, a mixing bowl in his hand, and Phil was forcibly reminded that he had to talk to Clint about the baking. Every time Phil had checked in with HQ during his mission, he was regaled with the number of people who had fallen victim to Clint’s sugar cookies that day. At some point it had to be their own fault – hadn’t they heard about the damn cookies? The SHIELD grapevine wasn’t usually so ineffective.

“Hey,” Clint said with a happy smile. “Hill called and told me you were on your way home. I started up the shower a few minutes ago, so it should be nice and warm for you.”

“Thank you.” Phil walked over to Clint and wrapped his arms around him, almost collapsing into the hug. “I missed you.”

Clint put an arm around him and pulled him close. “Missed you too, babe,” he whispered. He pressed a kiss to Phil’s neck. “Go take your shower. I’m making gingerbread cookies tonight, you can have one before bed.”

Phil nodded. Gingerbread was Clint’s favorite – maybe his previous baking attempts, failures though they had been, would help Clint get this recipe right. Phil fervently hoped so, but all he could think about now was the hot shower waiting for him.

Partially revived by his long shower, Phil dried off, put on his warmest pajamas, and wandered back to the kitchen. It was warm from the pre-heated oven, but the expected scent of gingerbread was absent. Clint was at the counter, surrounded by baking ingredients, stirring the contents of the mixing bowl furiously.

“How’s it going?” Phil stopped a good distance away to avoid being splattered by whatever was in the bowl.

“Fine,” Clint grumbled. “Except I think the dough should be thicker than this.”

Phil looked in the bowl. Inside was a brown soupy mess, nothing like what he thought gingerbread dough should be. “You added all of the ingredients?”

“Yeah. I mean, all of the ingredients we had here.” Clint lifted the spoon and let the ‘dough’ glop back into the bowl.

“Did we not have everything?” Phil’s stomach sank.

“Not quite. And we were short on some of the stuff we do have, so I didn’t use as much. You think that’s the problem?”

Phil took a deep breath. “Clint, have you ever followed a recipe before? Before you started baking, I mean?”

“Nah, never needed ‘em. Margo taught me everything she knew and I just remembered it all.” Margo had been the person who had mostly taken care of Clint when he was a kid in the circus. Clint’s cooking, while excellent, tended to be eclectic and he substituted whatever was on hand as necessary.

“Baking isn’t quite the same as throwing together a one-pot meal, Clint,” Phil said carefully. “I think you have to know the basics before you start substituting ingredients and leaving things out.”

“Oh.” Clint’s shoulders slumped. “I guess that explains this.” He dragged the spoon through the stuff in the bowl one more time and let it go. The handle clattered against the side of the bowl and then slowly slid down into the brown goo.

“And the sugar cookies. And the chocolate chip cookies – they were chocolate chip?” Might as well put it all out there.

“Yeah,” Clint sighed. “So they weren’t disappearing so fast because they were delicious.”

“Sorry, but no, they were not.”

Clint looked around the messy kitchen and heaved another sigh. Then he squared his shoulders. “All right. I’ll take care of this mess. You go to bed before you fall asleep where you’re standing.”

Phil didn’t even think of arguing – he was leaning heavily against the counter and suddenly he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open. “Good night,” he said, but he didn’t move.

Clint shook his head. “Need some help there?” Without waiting for an answer, he walked over to Phil and put an arm around him. “Let’s get you to bed, huh?”

“Come with me.” It only sounded whiny because he was so tired, Phil was sure. “Clean up in the morning.”

Clint laughed. “You talked me into it,” he said and led Phil to their bedroom.

**Day Twelve**

“Brownie?”

Phil looked up and there was a plate in front of his face, piled high with the aforementioned brownies. They looked delicious.

But it was Clint who was offering them, and Phil had to admit that fact made him hesitate. Clint hadn’t baked a single thing since the gingerbread disaster, and now there were brownies.

On the other hand, they really looked good.

Phil accepted one and took a small bite, prepared for anything.

He wasn’t prepared for it to be as good as it looked.

“Did you make these?” Phil tried to hide his surprise. Just because they both knew Clint had been terrible at baking before didn’t mean that he would never be good at it. But so good so quickly?

“Nah, these are from the bakery down the street from our place.” Clint picked up a brownie. “I figure if I want to know how to make my own gingerbread by next Christmas, I better find someone to teach me the way I learn best.”

“That’s a wonderful idea,” Phil said and he took another bite.

Clint grinned and stuffed his brownie in his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if this series will continue next year. It all depends on the prompts :)


End file.
